The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

THE ‘PRUDES’ AND THE ‘PROGRESSIVES’
men, the popularity of marriage and the rate of marriage
increased steadily.
The silencing of the feminist critique was not inevitable or
accidental. As we have seen, both male and female, ‘progressive’
sex reformers and orthodox sexologists, made savage attacks
on the pre-war feminists and their attitudes. An important weapon
in those attacks was the concept of the ‘prude’ which was refined
during the 1920s with-the aid of psychoanalytic ‘insights’ about
repression. The concept of ‘repression’ explained the development
of the ‘prude’. It was asserted that ‘repression’ of the supposedly
innate and powerful sexual urge would cause that urge to find
its outlet in a lurid interest in things sexual disguised as disgust
and condemnation. Gallichan’s book The Poison of Prudery
published in 1929 shows how the model of the ‘prude’, a woman
of course, had been refined. A Weith Knudsen quotation shows
clearly the nature of the problem to which the book was devoted:
‘It is the unfeeling and impotent women who dominate the whole
discussion with their folly, their reproaches, and their abuse of
Man.’ 7 Another quotation, from a Professor McCurdy, further
shapes the ‘prude’ concept: ‘Prudery is a feeble bluff, which the
woman who is, or was, subject to sex fantasies makes in an
effort to persuade herself and others that her mind is pure.’ 8
Not only could the indignant feminist now be dismissed as merely
having repressed her sexual urge, she could now be accused of
having secret desires for precisely those forms of male behaviour
which she criticised. Gallichan described the making of the
‘prude’ thus: ‘Hence prudery arises as reinforcement of resistance
against the forbidden thoughts, and the resistance may be so
heightened that it becomes a pathological symptom.’ 9 Alec Craig
characterised the pre-war feminists as prudes and puritans:
The feminist movement was not without undesirable results.
In the first place, the women who gained most in political,
economic and social influence were generally celibates. Their
influence on the national life tended towards puritanism,
drabness and a safety first attitude to sociological problems. 10
There was now an effective weapon with which to dismiss women
who persisted in criticising male sexual behaviour.
To the sexologists and sex reformers pre-war feminism had
presented a frightening spectacle of female solidarity, of women
who seemed prepared to live independently of men and to launch
a vigorous critique of male behaviour. The fears expressed about
‘intersexuality’, about women who refused to be feminine, dress
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